Using Board Games to Teach Science Vocabulary

If you're a teacher or the parent of a student having a tough time with spelling or vocabulary, Scrabble is the perfect indirect learning tool to teach all kinds of word skills. Indirect learning is any teaching method that doesn't seem like a learning experience to a student--Scrabble is a fun board game that combines crossword puzzles and traditional board game play.

Playing Scrabble is fun, and if your students have a competitive spirit, they'll really get into the ins and outs of the game without realizing they're learning something.

Science vocabulary words can be particularly tough to learn. Often made up of many different word parts, science vocabulary requires an understanding of prefixes and suffixes and often has to be learned through simple memorization.

One quick way to use Scrabble to teach vocabulary is to place certain words on the Scrabble board and have students modify those words with their Scrabble tiles to score points. For example--if you put the word "organ" on the board, students may quickly realize that they can spell lots of science vocabulary words using organ as a base. Organism, organic, organ system, etc. For multiple part words, you may want to modify the basic Scrabble rules to allow for multiple word phrases. Another example would be "root"--students could write root part, root hairs, primary root, etc.

Using your imagination, its easy to come up with ways to incorporate indirect learning into the teaching of science terms. Old board games you have in your classroom or at home can easily be modified to become indirect learning methods for students in science class.

I have found that a Jeopardy!-style game is a great way to teach science vocabulary or vocabulary words of any sort. If you have an old Jeopardy! home game lying around, simply write your own question cards and let the students play rounds of Jeopardy! to learn their vocabulary.

Indirect learning works because it uses games and other fun methods of teaching material that may otherwise seem boring. Using Scrabble and other board games to teach classroom concepts gets your student's minds off learning and distracts them from the routine of the classroom.

About The Author
Will Roby is a Scrabble enthusiast and content writer at Scrabble Pages. Check out his post on Toys R Us coupons for advice on saving money on your next Scrabble game.

This is a Guest post by Will Roby, if you want to write for science decoder as well click here